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Thursday, May 5, 2016

My Fellow Americans: Wise UP!

Donald Trump is frankly much smarter
than his opponents give him credit. For yes, it’s
not beyond him to repackage and reboot himself – his life so far has been a
series of moments of self-reinventions and repackaging tailored specifically to
help him deal with certain developments in his life, usually that has a commercial
significance. After that, he always snaps back to his usual corny self, until
the next moment comes. This means that he has a real chance at winning, despite
the demographic challenge facing him as a Republican in a country where the
major population centers have gone steadily over the last two decades or so in
the direction of the Democrats. But the Sanders phenomenon proves that isolationism
is a popular choice among American these days. And as more people seem ready to
vote, perhaps for the first time in decades, if not ever, in the coming
elections, it is quite likely that many of them will end up choosing Trump over
Clinton. In fact, Trump might be the reason why they will choose to vote.

No, this is not the most likely
scenario, but this a likely scenario. Those interested in avoiding it must take
it seriously and plan their campaign accordingly.

But even if Trump ended up losing
this election, the loss may not signal the end of his phenomenon. Should the battle
be closely fought, Trump might spend the next four years consolidating his hold
on the Republican Party and reinventing it before turning up again in 2020. So,
Hillary in fact needs to defeat Trump, then, have an excellent first term before
we can claim that the Trump phenomenon was effectively contained. Ad we are speaking
here of the phenomenon as reduced to the man himself but not necessarily to the
populist isolationist nationalist ethos he presents, which is bound to linger
for a while longer, or what political choices other members of his family might
eventually make.

Go ahead, patronize me!

About Ammar

Ammar Abdulhamid is a Syrian-American author and pro-democracy activist based in Silver Spring, Maryland. He is the founder of the Tharwa Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to democracy promotion. His personal website and entries from his older blogs can be accessed here.

The Delirica

The Delirica is a companion blog to the Daily Digest of Global Delirium meant to highlight certain DDGD items by publishing them as separate posts. Also, the Delirica republishes articles by Ammar that appeared on other sites since 2016. Older articles can be found on Ammar's internet archive: Ammar.World